Hans Rosling knows that statistics can change the world—if he can only get the right people to pay attention to them. To make that happen, he has spearheaded the development of Trend-alyzer, a software package that sends stolid data into fluid motion by creating animations of economic, social, and health statistics evolving through time. Nations race across the screen through decades of progress in a few seconds, allowing undetected trends and buried connections to leap out at viewers. The dramatic animations are already changing the perspectives of political leaders, entrepreneurs, and activists around the globe.
Rosling’s passion for statistics was born in his early career as a physician in Mozambique, where he discovered a new paralytic disease called konzo. By carefully sifting through medical data from the afflicted regions, he identified malnutrition and inadequately processed cassava—a tuber used as food in tropical countries—as the cause of the disease, allowing for prevention through better food preparation. In March, Trendalyzer was acquired by Google, which will make it freely accessible to a global audience. Rosling’s latest mission is to make publicly funded health, social, and economic statistics from the United Nations and governments freely available as well. Combining that information with the software needed to interpret it, he contends, will encourage entrepreneurship and drive public policies that combat poverty and disease. Due in part to his advocacy, the U.N. recently opened its online global database free of charge. DISCOVER spoke with Rosling—professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and a 20-year veteran researcher of disease, poverty, and hunger in Africa—about how he set statistics loose on the world stage, what he has learned from his decades studying global development, and why he is obsessed with making public data truly public.
You spent 20 years studying disease, hunger, and poverty in Africa. How did that shape your view of economic development?
I’ve done a lot of practical anthropology, living in villages with people and realizing how difficult it is to get out of poverty. When in poverty, people use their skill to avoid hunger. They can’t use it for progress. To get away from poverty, you need several things at the same time: school, health, and infrastructure—those are the public investments. And on the other side, you need market opportunities, information, employment, and human rights.
